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Jesus in my class Through my life, there have always been experiences that had the capacity to affect my faith. But few of them really made such a profound impact on my faith as my entrance into La Salle Institute in Troy and its religious program. To be honest, I didn’t think that becoming a cadet in a religious school would alter my perceptions of God. I lacked faith in the sense that I never really put God first in my life. God was the guy you might ask for stuff when you wanted it, and if you did something wrong He wouldn’t give it to you. He was somewhere in the sky, and Jesus was His human son who should be worshiped for some reason. This was about the extent of my faith. I obviously wasn’t much of a Catholic then, so how did La Salle cause such a fundamental shift in my faith? I entered religion class skeptical of any more "religious instruction" than I had to endure in Sunday School. I used to have difficulty grasping what God was, but we began by discussing just that. We defined Him in all His attributes, in how Christ was actually fully God and human, which I honestly never knew before. It had been bought down to my level of understanding. I learned much more than that, though, and that brings me to the point. La Salle’s religious classes changed me in that I was no longer an outsider looking into Christianity, but became an actively learning member. More questions were answered, but, throughout all this, one still lingered: "Why did Jesus really die?" It was because He loved us and still does. God loved us to the point that He became like us and died as a sacrifice to give all the second chance at heaven. I felt an incredible sense of burning love for this impoverished, uneducated carpenter who was fully and finally my God. One day, I looked up at a crucifix and realized I was not looking at it with uncertainty anymore. I was looking upon God, and in Him I saw an eternal reflection of all I’ll ever truly want, of all I’ll ever really need. (11/11/04) |